Man found guilty of stabbing outside Clifton Park concert venue

By Lucian McCarty

Thursday, May 2, 2013

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Jurors found a man guilty of stabbing another man outside a rock concert venue in November after a three-week trial and four days of deliberation, but both sides in the case declared the verdict a victory.

Daniel P. Taylor, 29, of South Shore Road in East Caroga Lake was convicted of second-degree assault Wednesday, a felony that could put him behind bars for up to seven years.

He was acquitted, though, of a more serious first-degree assault charge that could have sent him to prison for up to 25 years.

Taylor got into an argument with a man inside and then outside the Upstate Music Hall, formerly known as Northern Lights, during a 2011 concert.

The 16-inch slice went from one side of his rib cage to the other. There is some dispute over how deep it went, but the victim sustained a 7-inch long laceration to his liver.

"It was really a horrific injury," said Assistant District Attorney Deb Kaelin, who prosecuted the case with Michele Schettino. "He really left him there to die."

Rench said Taylor never meant to cut the victim. He said Taylor has a long-term shoulder problem that has led him to dislocate it more than 20 times.

Rench said Taylor drew the knife to scare the victim away, but inadvertently made contact when the man allegedly lunged at him.

Though the victim suffered no long-term impairment because of the injury, the slice was traumatic.

"The man's intestines were on the pavement," Rench said.

Kaelin said the victim stumbled across the street, at "that point, his insides are really outside his body" and he fell onto a car.

The driver, as it happened, was a doctor from Albany Medical Center, who applied pressure to the wound and called 911.

Kaelin interviewed members of the jury at the conclusion of the trial. She said they acquitted Taylor because it was unclear why he drew the knife and whether he intended to cause "serious physical injury," a requirement for a first-degree assault charge.

"He feels he was justified in what he did, based on what he knew at the time," Rench said.

"Jurors, in some ways I think, gave a compromise verdict," said District Attorney James A. Murphy III, who commended the assistant district attorneys for their prosecution of the case.

"We knew (first-degree assault) would be a difficult charge to reach," he said. "There were issues about the defendant's claim of self-defense. He claimed he was fearful the victim was going to attack him."

"At the end of the day, we would love to be a fly on the wall in the jury deliberations," Kaelin said.

Taylor is scheduled to be sentenced June 27. He faces up to seven years in prison and three years of post-release supervision.